'Ladies and gentlemen,' said Mr. Hayes, who had been pushed, much against
his will, before the curtain of the Theatre Royal, Bristol, to make the
following statement, 'I'm sorry to inform you that in consequence of
indisposition--that is to say, the accidental spraining of her ankle--Miss
Leslie will not be able to appear to-night. Your kind indulgence is
therefore requested for Miss D'Arcy, who has, on the shortest notice,
consented to play the part of Serpolette.'
'Did yer ever 'ear of anyone spraining an ankle on purpose?' asked a
scene-shifter.
'Hush!' said the gas-man, 'he'll 'ear you.'
Amid murmurs of applause, Mr. Hayes backed into the wings.
'Well, was it all right?' he asked Dick.
'Right, my boy, I should think it was; there was a touch of Gladstone in
your accidentally sprained ankle.'
'What do you mean?' said the discomfited acting manager.
'I haven't time to tell you now. Now then, girls, are you ready?' he said,
rushing on to the stage and hurriedly changing the places of the
choristers. Putting his hand on a girl's shoulder, he moved her to the
right or left as his taste dictated. Then retiring abruptly, he cried, 'Now
then, up you go!' and immediately after thirty voices in one sonority sang:
'"In Corneville's wide market-pla-a-ces,
Sweet servant-girls, with rosy fa-a-ces,
Wait here, wait here."'
'Now, then, come on. You make your entrance from the top left.'
'I don't think I shall ever be able to do that run in.'
'Don't begin to think about anything. If you don't like the run, I'll tell
you how to do it,' said Dick, his face lighting up with a sudden
inspiration; 'do it with a cheeky swagger, walking very slowly, like this;
and then when you get quarter of the way down the stage, stop for a moment
and sing, "Who speaks ill of Serpolette?" Do you see?'
'Yes, yes, that will suit me better; I understand.'
Then standing under the sloping wing, they both listened anxiously for the
cue.
'She loves Grenicheux.'
'There's your cue. On you go; give me your shawl.'
The footlights dazzled her; a burst of applause rather frightened than
reassured her, and a prey to a sort of dull dream, she sang her first
lines. But she was a little behind the beat. Montgomery brought down his
stick furiously, the _répliques_ of the girls buffeted her ears like
palms of hands, and it was not until she was halfway through the gossiping
couplets, and saw Montgomery's arm swing peacefully to and fro over the
bent profiles of the musicians that she fairly recovered her presence of
mind. Then came the little scene in which she runs away from her uncle
Gaspard and hides behind the Baillie. And she dodged the old man with such
sprightliness from one side of the stage to the other that a murmur of
admiration floated over the pit, and, arising in echoes, was prolonged
almost until she stepped down to the footlights to sing the legend of
Serpolette.
The quaintly tripping cadences of the tune and the humour of the words,
which demanded to be rather said than sung, were rendered to perfection. It
was impossible not to like her when she said:
'"I know not much of my relations,
I never saw my mother's face;
And of preceding generations
I never found a single trace.
'"I may have fallen from the sky,
Or blossomed in a rosebud sweet;
But all I know is this, that I
Was found by Gaspard in his wheat."'
A smile of delight filled the theatre, and Kate felt the chilling sense of
separation which exists between the public and a debutante being gradually
filled in by a delicious but almost incomprehensible notion of contact--a
sensation more delicate than the touch of a lover's breath on your face.
This reached a climax when she sang the third verse, and had not etiquette
forbade, she would have had an encore for it alone.
'"I often think that perhaps I may
The heiress to a kingdom be,
But as I wore no clothes that day
I brought no papers out with me."'
These words, that had often seemed coarse in Leslie's mouth, in Kate's
seemed adorably simple. So winning was the smile and so coquettishly
conscious did she seem of the compromising nature of the statement she was
making, that the entire theatre was actuated by the impulse of one thought:
Oh! what a little dear you must have been lying in the wheat-field! The
personality of the actress disappeared in the rosy thighs and chubby arms
of the foundling, and notwithstanding the length of the song, she had to
sing it twice over. Then there was an exit for her, and she rushed into the
wings. Several of the girls spoke to her, but it was impossible for her to
reply to them. Everything swam in and out of sight like shapes in a mist,
and she could only distinguish the burly form of her lover. He wrapped a
shawl about her, and a murmur of amiable words followed her, and, with her
thoughts fizzing like champagne, she tried to listen to his praises.
Then followed moments in which she anxiously waited for her cues. She was
nervously afraid of missing her entrance, and she dreaded spoiling her
success by some mistake. But it was not until the end of the act when she
stepped out of the crowd of servant-girls to sing the famous coquetting
song that she reached the summit of her triumph.
Kate was about the medium height, a shade over five feet five. When she
swung her little dress as she strutted on the stage she reminded you
immediately of a pigeon. In her apparent thinness from time to time was
revealed a surprising plumpness.
For instance, her bosom, in a walking dress no more than an indication, in
a low body assumed the roundness of a bird's, and the white lines of her
falling shoulders floated in long undulations into the blue masses of her
hair. The nervous sensibility of her profession had awakened her face, and
now the brown eyes laughed with the spiritual maliciousness with which we
willingly endow the features of a good fairy. The hips were womanly, the
ankle was only a touch of stocking, and the whole house rose to a man and
roared when coquettishly lifting the skirt, she sang:
'"Look at me here! look at me there!
Criticize me everywhere!
From head to feet I am most sweet,
And most perfect and complete."'
The audience, principally composed of sailors--men home from months of
watery weariness, nights of toil and darkness, maddened by the irritating
charm of the music and the delicious modernity of Kate's figure and dress,
looked as if they were going to precipitate themselves from the galleries.
Was she not the living reality of the figures posted over the hammocks in
oil-smelling cabins, the prototype of the short-skirted damsels that
decorated the empty match-boxes which they preserved and gazed at under the
light of the stars?